Second Chance
by Demiser of D
Summary: A ship falls out of hyperspace at the most horrible of times, and soon the Heptite Guild is left to take care of the mess, which is complicated by the one survivor. In the process of revision, cause it sucks at the moment! Patience, pwease!
1. Enter Stage: Orbit : Scene: Crash!

**Second Chance**

"Mayday, Mayday, this is vessel _Doubter's Chance, _Mayday!. We have a hull breach and drive failure, requesting assistance! Mayday, Mayday! Scoria 3, Planet Scoria Three, do you read? We urgently need assistance!"

The crew of the Doubter's Chance had a reputation for betting against the odds and winning. They had earned their name in one such day.

Today was not that day.

"Mayday, Mayday! This is vessel _Doubter's Chance; _we have a hull breach, and we need help _now!_ C'mon, where are you!?"

Suddenly, a voice crackled over the intercom, "Roger, we hear you, _Doubter's Chance. _What's your status?"

The grizzled man at in the comm-booth grabbed the microphone quickly , "We've been caught in a meteor shower and stuffered structural damage, and our Crystal Drive is offline! We have a zero percent possibility of repair, I repeat, zero chance of repair, it's all we can do to keep her together up here! We'll be entering the atmosphere shortly; unless we can get a tanglefield net or a tug to pull us away from the planet we're going to go down in less than five minutes, and—"

The voice cut him off, snobbishly officious, "Your request for landing is denied, _Chance_. This planet is has a class four restriction, all unauthorized landing is prohibited."

"You don't understand," he snarled back, "One way or another, we're going down; our crystal drive is disabled!"

"Um…I-I'll put you through."

There was a painfully long pause, and when the line was reconnected, an older man replied. "This is Guild Master Lanzecki, on Moon station Shankill. Apologies, _Chance. _You've come along during our Passover storms, and due to the deadly weather there's no way to get out there in time to help you. Is there any way to prevent entry?"

On the bridge, if the mood could have darkened, it would have. Finally, grizzled man muttered,

"Negative…negative."

Another grungy man ran up behind him and whispered something into his ear, causing his weathered skin to blanch; slowly he nodded, and turned back to the microphone.

"Apologies, Shankill, I've just received word that our primary heat buffer has been punctured. There's no way we'll be able to make it to the ground…"_ Alive._

The bridge went silent for a long moment.

"We have a last request. Would you transmit our black box recording and last wills and testaments to the families specified within? There aren't many of us who have families, but as captain, I wouldn't want any of them to be…not provided for."

The answer from Shankill took a long several seconds to return.

"Confirmed, _Chance. _Godspeed."

"Goodbye." He murmured , not bothering to depress the transmit button.

Moments later, they hit the atmosphere.

Officially, the _Doubter's Chance_ ceased to exist several minutes later.

Officially, there were no survivors.

Unfortunately for the Heptite Guild, they were officially wrong.

O

**Chase Chance**

O

Chase wasn't lucky to have been resting in the upper level air ducts when the meteor shower first hit; if he hadn't been where he was, when he was, he almost certainly wouldn't have fared any better than the other 9 people that were in the upper section of the ship. But it wasn't luck.

Since he was sitting directly in the airflow he was the last person to suffer from decompression, and the drills, repeated so many times that they were (pun intended) drilled into his brain, finally paid off; within seconds after the telltale popping of his ears that indicated a pressure loss, he was already struggling into his scavenged suit, and by the time the oxygen had reached critical levels he was safe and warm, only worrying about whether the patches in the ancient suit would last long enough to get to a pressurized area. But it wasn't luck. He had chosen this spot specifically for that purpose when he first chose this ship. It had been a crucial part of his choice.

He had had to steal the suit from the ships garbage pile, and he had never been exactly sure what was wrong with it, but he had patched the few leaks he could find and just hoped the dirty thing would be good enough. That wasn't luck, either. Regardless of the name of the ship, he didn't take any chances. By the time he was done with it, the suit would have stood up to Academy Regulations. Wouldn't have looked as pretty, though.

Slowly he crawled down the duct to the first opening, well oiled from many entrances and exits, and carefully lowered himself to the floor of the upper decks. The suit hadn't been designed to fit through such a tight space, but eventually he squeezed through, hoping nobody had seen him; fortunately, a quick glance around betrayed no audience, and he straightened up, still watching carefully for any survivors, but also breathing in the sights around him, sights he rarely had the chance to see.

Back in the ship's glory days, the upper decks had been lined with hundreds of windows, allowing hundreds of passengers to gaze out with wonder at the stars. Nobody really had any idea how old the ship was anymore; almost every part had been replaced at one time or another. Even the original windows were long gone; over time they had been modified to anything from greenhouse radiation windows to personal terminals, but some of them were still unblocked, and they left him with an awe-inspiring view of the stars.

He crouched the best he could in the slightly ill-fitting suit and scuttled across the floor, trying to stay out of sight, knowing fully well that even in an emergency his discovery would result in immediate disembarkation, which in the case of a spaceship run by scavengers and black handed men like the _Chance_ actually meant _immediate_ disembarkation, usually through the nearest airlock.

Of course, they probably wouldn't bother to take off his suit, either. The thought of spending hours spinning through space, until his suit failed, or his oxygen ran out, or he just plain starved to death, made him cringe with a shiver of claustrophobia.

Quietly as possible, he peeked around a corner, and immediately shrank back as he saw a human figure near one of the many desks that littered the rooms on the observation deck. Moments later he realized with a jolt that the figure wasn't wearing a pressure suit. Swallowing growing bile, he edgedout into where he would be easily seen, and paused; the man still didn't move. Finally he walked up to the man and peeked at his face and immediately he wished he hadn't. It was Farlogsen; his eyes bulged out of their sockets, and his tongue, dark purple, was protruding from his mouth, while his entire face was covered with the red of space-freeze. He recognized him, he was one of the eccentrics that had bought part of the _Chance_ in the very beginning, and had been working constantly to keep the old wreck together ever since then. It seemed that not even all his skill had saved him from the initial decompression shock wave.

For a moment, Chase considered turning back. His flawed, ancient suit might do the same to him;—but his goal was still ahead, and finally he turned his head to the side and walked past the corpse of the unfortunate man. He tried to remind himself that he'd been as much a criminal as the rest of the crew, but every time he did, the image of his face, eyes bulging from their sockets, flashed into his mind, and eventually he was forced to resort to turning on a small music player he had stolen from one of the crewmembers. Even though it was filled with music he didn't like, the loud, obnoxious beats drowned out any wayward thoughts, and at last he was able to walk mindlessly forward.

Finally he reached his goal; the old comlink room, with the communication channel that had originally run throughout the ship, sealed (apparently) tightly shut. At some point in the ship's history, someone had apparently tried to modify it into some sort of rudimentary food replicator but had failed miserably, leaving the inside of the room coated with something closely approximated to goat cheese from hell. After that incident, the entire room had been sealed off, but not before two people almost died from uncontrollable vomiting.

Chase had considered making it his room, but he was no more immune to the smell than anyone else; fortunately, he had recently acquired his suit, and with it he re-purposed its equipment to his own uses. The _Chance _never stayed in port for any longer than it took to complete any transactions and refuel, to avoid any 'unpleasant visitors'. The list included anyone and everyone from Central Intelligence, old flames of the crew, and occasionally even bandits that were down on their luck enough to try for an ancient ship like the _Chance. _Therefore, for the entire time it was docked, the ship would be constantly under guard; Chase would need a good several days to get into a position onto the ship to be able to leave.

So he turned the old communication room into a spytap on the main bridge. It wasn't even very difficult; the old equipment was still there, all he had to do was disable the microphone on his end and force the far end to stay on. Every day he would listen there for hours on end, hoping one day that they would say those fateful words; Earth! Going to Earth! Specifically, where the central Brain and Brawn academy was located, the central location where all Brawns must go to be trained. Rumor had it that anyone could be a brawn if they were good enough, and Chase was determined that he would be one of those lucky few!

He pressed the buttons that he had set up when he jimmied the lock, and the room quickly slipped a few inches open, just enough to let his bulky suit through, and also letting a blast of air out, escaping into the vacuum that had taken residence in the rest of this part of the ship. Quickly he moved over to his modified connection, connecting the wires to hear what was going on; The Bridge was in the lowest, most protected part of the ship, and they would be the ones discussing just what would be done to fix the ship, and that would let him avoid them until the repairs were done. Finally, he connected the last wire, and crackling voices rang through his helmet.

"…negative. "

There was a long silence, and then his mike crackled into life again.

"Apologies, Shankill, I've just received word that our primary heat buffer has been punctured. There's no way we'll be able to make it to the ground…"

The voices faded into a crackling silence, and Chase abruptly, in one freezing moment, realized just how fardled things were.

The Main Buffer was the heat shield on the bottom of the ship, to assist with emergency landings. There would be no need for it if they were doing anything but a dreaded emergency landing, and if it were holed…atmosphere, heated to flame hot by entry at thousands of miles per hour, would boil and char anything it came into contact with.

His mind worked furiously, attempting to discover the safest course of action, and he was already tapping the code to open the door mere seconds later. He tore out the wires of the comlink uncaringly; if the bridge didn't exist anymore, there wouldn't be any use for a comlink to it, would there?

He knew exactly where he needed to go, already; one of the greenhouses had been given additional radiation shielding for an experiment he never understood, but on the plus side, it would give him the tiniest bit larger chance of living.

He was sprinting down the halls as fast as he could when the _Chance _hit the atmosphere. Beyond that, all he remembered was a period of burning, shaking hell.

OO

He remembered being tossed through the air, arms flying out as he tried to stop himself.

He remembered the sickening noise it made when he hit the wall, as he felt both arms shatter.

He remembered the bright orange glow that surrounded the ship, as pieces of the ship were torn off one at a time.

He remembered somehow dragging himself to a window, and looking down at the rapidly approaching ground. He wouldn't die. He refused!

He remembered closing his eyes—as titanic forces struck the ship with the strength of a mountain, pressing him into the ground with far too many G's.

He remembered…impact.

Then, everything went dark.

O

**Shankill Moon Base**

O

On the Shankill moon base, the weather station operators watched with morbid curiosity as the ship entered the strongest part of the Mach storms which made the weather on Ballybran so famous; while the storms that arose at other times of the year were ferocious, the Passover storms pushed them to a whole new level. Capable of moving massive boulders, crushing mountains, and changing entire landscapes in only the course of several weeks, they were both a wonder and a terror to behold.

Of course, for almost 500 years, no-one had ever been stupid enough to pilot a ship into one, especially not as large a ship as this one, which in most cases wouldn't have landed at all. And so, despite the unfortunate implications of the crash, all eyes on the station were trained on the ship as it entered the atmosphere, even those of the guild master himself.

OO

"Their course is taking them directly into the rim walls of the eye of the storm, sir. Our latest readings indicate that winds might be gusting up to1400 miles per hour in there, but we can't be completely certain."

Circuitry had yet to be made that could stand the simultaneous atmospheric and sonic barrages that made up a Passover storm, leaving the weathermen to do nothing but estimate the weather to the best of their ability. From behind the weather tech, the Guild Master sighed,

"It's probably for the best. Even if they did manage to survive the impact in some fashion, we would have no way to get them under containment fast enough to prevent the symbiote's onset. In the eyes of the guild, it would be best if they all died here."

The tech turned to him, dispassionate, but with eyes sparking, "And what about them? What about their families...and friends?"

The guild master's face was set in stone, "I've looked at their last wills and testaments, and traced them back to any possible beneficiaries. All of them are either dead, or have been off the record for so long that they're legally dead." He shook his head and turned his back to the view screen, not watching as the ship was hit by the first massive gust, sending it spinning in flames towards the earth.

"It's a shame. However, they should be pleased to know that their sacrifice will aid us in understanding the storm mechanics here. Their sacrifice will save the lives of many others."

There was a long silence, which was then broken by the tech's gasp, "Sir, look!"

Lanzecki turned and saw to even his amazement that the entire ship had been seized by a tremendous updraft, and had been tossed, flames doused by the winds, directly into the comparatively calm eye of the storm.

"Astounding…their luck might not be up quite yet."

"Ah—No, sir…it looks like the holes in their heat shield have already destroyed most of the interior of the ship." The tech turned somberly back to face the guild master, "The chance of survivors is…minimal."

They both turned and watched gravely as the ship, thrown like a twig, soared high through the air in its last voyage, until finally crashing to the ground, pieces of metal and glass exploding from the side of the ship as it skidded down a long valley, shredding layer after layer of its thick hull in pieces behind it, until last of all it smashed to a halt, ramming into an overhanging cliff at the deepest part of the valley, and stopping with an ear grinding screech of metal.

In the weather room on Shankill, Lanzecki turned once again from the screen.

"Alert the ground teams to prepare for a search and rescue the instant the Passover storms abate. We will respect their last wishes, all mentioned items that are recovered will be held in storage for two galactic years, and a bulletin will be released. However, inform all ground teams that any part of the ship not specifically mentioned in the documentation can be scavenged by them, if they should so choose. I'm sure they'll be able to find any number of interesting antiques in the wreckage."

Without waiting for confirmation, the guild master strode from the room, leaving the tech to shake his head in consternation. The Guild Master was, and always would be, the Guild Master.

O

**Search and Rescue Team,**

**Ballybran, Scoria System**

O

A little over a week later, the first teams arrived on the scene. It wasn't even an hour later when the leader of the team, a man nicknamed Bendy, for fairly obvious reasons, kicked one of the struts of the ship angrily.

"Damn it, what on earth were these people thinking? This ship was hardly even staying together, they never should have taken it into hyper without years in dry-dock." He bent and picked up a piece of colored glass, throwing it away when he realized it wasn't crystal.

"Shards, I wouldn't have flown in this ship no matter how much you paid me, it was a wreck even before it became a wreck!"

From a dozen feet away, another member of the team wiped the sweat from her forehead, and snapped out, "Yeah. Why are we being forced to clean this all up, anyway? This thing's nothing but a pile of junk, you'd get more out of it for scrap than by picking it up piece by piece."

Bendy looked thoughtfully at her, then said, "Y'know, we're not actually being ordered to do this, I don't think. The orders were pretty ambiguous, as far as I could tell we're just sorta doing this as a favor to the dearly departed over there." He jerked his hand toward the still smoking remnants of the ship, a klick away. "I was just in it because I thought there might be something in it for me, but it looks like I was wrong." He turned and yelled at the rest of the crew, "_Hey! Work's over with, lets blow out of here!_" Immediately the crew straightened in relief, and walked back towards their skimmer, moaning about the work and the heat; post-Passover weather was usually extremely humid, with much of the water that was whipped into the air over the storms settling out over the planet over the course of the ensuing weeks as gentle fog, a startling counterpoint to the hell that were the Passover Storms.

Once the rest of the group had reboarded the skimmer, Bendy followed suit, strapping himself into the driver's seat and carefully lifting off, doing one quick pass over the remnants of the ship before he left. He had time for only a brief moment of remorse for the dead crew before he hit the accelerator and flew out of sight.

O

**Rimbol**

O

Rimbol was cruising at thirty thousand feet when he saw something that instantly set his heart pounding; a flash of light from the ground.

In the mountains of the Milekey range, that could mean only one thing; Crystal.

Instantly he set his sled into a dive, at the same time looking through the charts he had piled on the seat beside him. _Aha!_ He thought triumphantly as he found the map for his current area, and eagerly scanned it…_Excellent! Not a claim for 50 klicks in any direction! Finally, a claim of my very own!_

He had been looking for a claim for almost a year now, but even in that amount of time, some sort of bad luck or fate had kept him from finding anything other than abandoned claims, or worse, not-so-abandoned claims. He hadn't made any friends with being chased off of claim after claim, so he thanked his lucky stars that old singers' memories deteriorated the way they did, otherwise he'd probably have a dozen mortal enemies by now.

He sighed contentedly and set the map down to his side, smiling. At least his worries were over now; he had started to worry that there might be something actually wrong with him; in his continuing failures to find crystal, but with any luck…all those worries will soon have passed!

With a whoop, he seized the controls and did a barrel roll, finally spinning down and into sight of his future claim…instantly, his heart dropped, as he looked with heavy disappointment at the shards of glass that were among the pieces of…metal? He whipped his sled around and looked, wide-eyed, at the smoking ruin of the _Chance._ Immediately, he snapped his intercom open and hailed the base.

"Base, this is Singer Rimbol, has there been any word of any crashes in…" he paused for a moment, unsure of what he should say. He wasn't sure if there was any crystal here anymore, but just in case… "Crashes on the planet?"

The receiver crackled for a moment, and then a voice came over the com, "Singer, this is home base. My apologies, nobody was available for the beginning of your message, could you please repeat?"

Rimbol grinned at the deferential manner of the officer; everyone was careful with singers, doubly so when they called in from the ranges.

"Sure!" he said with humor, "I'm looking at a smoking wreck right now, any chance a ship's been recorded as going down recently?"

There was a long pause, and when the voice returned it sounded surprised, but slightly warmer, "Ah, affirmative. Didn't you hear? A ship got hit by a meteor shower 'prox a week ago, went straight into the Passover storms, there wasn't anything we could do about it."

Rimbol thought for a long moment, then said, "Hmm, is there anything about salvage rights in the charter? Do you suppose anyone would mind if I took a look around?"

"Um, let me check…" the voice crackled out, and then back in a moment later, "Negative, there's nothing in the regs about salvage, either affirming or banning it. There was supposed to be a salvage team sent out earlier today, but—ah, never mind. Looks like they looked around, but couldn't find anything interesting. Ended up turning around after about an hour, cited bad weather."

Bad weather? Rimbol looked at his weather readout quizzically, and blinked at what he saw. Despite the humidity being above average for Ballybran, it was nearly optimal for a Scartine. _Odd._

As he had been talking, he had flown low over the field of debris, but his experience with scavenging on his home world letting him quickly realize that little of value would be intact there. Instead, he pulled up on the controls, finally settling his ship to rest on top of the last remaining portion of the _Chance_, which was still big enough to dwarf his little sled.

He pressed the com button again, "Well then, thanks. I think I'll stop and take a look around for a while. If anything comes up, just send me the emergency override code and I'll be back in a jiffy!"

Finally, his sled's landing gear fully stabilized, and he hopped from the hatch, whistling a jaunty tune as he began to inspect the remains of the ship.

OO

Back at the base, the coms officer stared, stunned, at the comlink, before she stood and stumbled back to the nearest lounge.

"Whoa, Calyn, what happened to you?"

All the people in the lounge turned to stare at her a she made her way to a seat. Quickly, one of the other coms operators shoved a Yarran beer into her hand, and only after she had taken a long drink was she able to speak.

"A Singer…just said…thank you."

The room fell dead silent, and then in a wave it broke out into laughter; she weakly grinned, and sipped once again at her beer.

OO

_Amazing…wow! _

Rimbol picked up an ancient plastisteel work station and held it up in the light with admiration.

_Astounding! To think that the people who ran this ship were able to do so much with so little! I would have loved to have met them._

Dropping the fused workstation, he stopped and stretched, popping the joints in his back as he stood. He had been here for an hour, and he hadn't yet ceased being amazed.

_The crew of this ship must have loved this ship. It must have been cheaper and easier to just abandon it, but they never did. They repaired her, and maintained her, for years longer than it ever should have lasted. _

He shook his head. _Amazing._

Moving on, he looked to the left and right at the various components that made up the ship. All of them had been damaged by heat from the re-entry, and then they had the telltale signs of what wind could do on Ballybran, but he was certain that there should still be enough viable components left inside to make at least a few hundred, maybe even thousand credits.

Finally, he found what he was looking for; one of the windows had been blown open, something inside having been thrown out with incredible force, enough to shatter even the space-hardened plastic.

Jumping down, he peered inside the dark husk; much of the contents of the ship had been thrown around during the crash, he saw; what remained had piled up in one of the corners, the floor angling slightly down the way the _Chance_ had finally come to land. Just as he was about to hop through the window, however, he felt something…the hair on his arms arose, and his eyes widened as he felt the faint trail of crystal sing along his body. He spun; maybe his luck wasn't all gone, after all!

However, the first thing his eyes settled on wasn't any crystal, but instead the remaining shards of the window, colored a dark reddish brown color.

_Huh. What that stuff crusted on the window?, _he thought, distracted; as he reached out to touch it, part of the color came away on his hand.

_That's strange. It must have come from whatever got thrown out this window. _He began to trace where the object must have flown, based on the angles of the cracks, and at the same time absently brought the dry reddish substance up to his nose. _That's odd…it smells almost like…? _His eyes widened, and a moment later he was sprinting towards the strange lump he had deduced as the object, and he blanched at what he saw. Lying in a dried pool of its own blood, a figure lay on the ground; to his amazement he saw the faint signs of past movement. Somehow, even after being thrown from the ship at what must have been incredible speed, the person had managed to turn over and look at the remains of their ship before they had died.

Their suit must have been shredded during the crash; there were numerous holes rent in the patch-ridden fabric.

Rimbol bowed his head at the person's bravery; man or woman, he couldn't tell. When they had hit ground, blood had sprayed across the helmet, obscuring most of his vision into the inside, causing a pang of sadness for the unnamed person; they hadn't been able to view the ship they had struggled so hard to see.

Just to be certain, he knelt to check for a pulse, reaching through a hole rent in the neck of the suit.

For a long moment, he felt nothing…then he jumped in surprise.

Minutes later, he was in the air.

OO

"Home Base, this is Rimbol! Urgent news, repeat, urgent!"

He mashed the 'emergency' button, hoping desperately that someone would be near the comstation, as he flew at top speed back to home base. He had never had cause to push his sled before, but he did now, causing unpleasant vibrations to shake through the sled in protest. Making sure he was moving in the correct direction, he glanced over at his unexpected passenger; he was stunned that anyone had survived from the crash, but more shocking that they had survived the Mach storms that had boiled around them for a week afterward. Of course, only time could tell if their mind had been scrambled by the legendary noise…

Suddenly, a voice crackled over the communicator, "This is Home Base-what's your situation?" It was the same voice as before, with the political tone once again coloring it.

"This is Rimbol! I have a medical emergency, I found a survivor! I'm returning at maximum speed, I'll be back in 'prox 15 minutes, I need a medical team immediately on landing!"

"But, protocols…" she said, slightly bewildered, but he cut her off,

"Shards, woman! This person has been lying out in the weather for over a week! It's a miracle they're still alive as it is, I needed a medical team _yesterday!"_

There was a long pause, and finally her voice came back, "You'll have it!"

He slumped forward in relief, "I could kiss you, woman!"

"I'm...Calyn. I-I mean I'll tell them to meet you at the hangar!" With an audible click the other end cut off.

"Thank you, Calyn!" he said, fervently, and then shut off his comlink and began to try finding a way to divert any extra power to boost the speed on his sled. He skidded into the hangar a scarce ten minutes later, and just as promised a medical team was waiting, still readying their equipment as he skidded across the tarmac.

Almost before he came to a complete halt, they were already inside the sled, slicing the remnants of the suit off his passenger…a young man, he realized. Probably not older than 20. Before he could get a good look, they had already sealed him inside a medical human sized pouch that would re-hydrate his body, and zipped him off toward the medical bay.

As he jumped down from his sled, he stretched, and saw that one person was still waiting, shifting nervously from foot to foot as he approached.

"Hi!" he said, with a jaunty smile, infinitely pleased with himself for what he had done. Saving someone's life wasn't something you could do every day! Now he had something he could use to brag at Killa, cut her down to size a little!

"…Hi," the girl said, shyly, "I'm…I'm…"

He recognized the voice suddenly, and his eyes widened, and he quickly snagged her hand and raised it to his lips, "Calyn?" she blushed brightly and nodded, and he smiled gently, "Y'know, I meant what I said up in the sled; not everyone would have gotten a medical team out here so quickly!"

She looked down, embarrassed, but he reached out and pulled up her chin with two fingers.

"Sorry, I'm just a poor old Scartine with no sense of privacy. Forgive me?"

She shook her head, eyes wide, and he realized that they were a wonderful shade of brown.

"You're not old! Or poor! And…" she flushed again, "I…didn't mind."

His grin grew and he snagged her hand again, "In that case, would you indulge me and join me in a meal tonight? I don't know any other way to say thank you for what you did."

"But—Singers only ever talk to other singers!"

He raised his wrist and pointed at the wristband that was still there and he quirked a grin, "Not a real singer just yet!" he chuckled, "Anyway, I've never been much for tradition. Join me?"

She nodded wordlessly, and his irrepressible smile broke forth again.

"Alright, I'll meet you at…D47, at eighteen-hundred? I would love to join you right away, but," he wrinkled his nose comically, "I'm not exactly fit for human company right now. So…I'll see you?"

He phrased it as a question, and as she once again nodded, and he turned and headed off toward the Singer's quarters, calling back over his shoulder, "See you…soon. And thanks again, Calyn!"

Calyn stared with wonder at the door where he disappeared for minutes after he left, until she suddenly realized how long she had been standing there.

"Oh! I need to get ready!"

Spinning, she ran back to her quarters, a nervous grin spreading across her face.

O

O

_Part one of my Crystal Singer Fanfic! Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me to be able to make you guys happy. _

_Cheers,_

_~! g_


	2. The Third Fleet

_It was impossible; The ship had not even hit the ground yet, and already it was being thrown around as if it were merely a raft in a storm. A tremendously, unfathomably large storm, blasts of pure sound knocking the ship across the sky as if it were little more than a toy._

_A tremendous force blasted through the ship, sending Chase flying against one of the bulkheads and pinning him there with multiple gees. Too late, he watched with horror as a heavy steel desk slowly warped, and with an agonizing scream of metal, tore itself from the wall and fell across his legs much too fast. Instantly, all feeling in his lower body disappeared, and his mind was so crazed with the sound and pain that he was simply grateful that he was no longer moving._

_Bucking wildly, the ship skipped across the rocky ground, shaking him from side to side, only the metal pinning him to the wall keeping him from being thrown about the room._

_Finally, the ship slammed into the base of a thousand foot cliff, crashing to a halt, slowing from hundreds of miles an hour in a moment and tearing him from beneath the desk with enough force to shatter through one of the incredibly strong windows; the very last thing he remembered was the window approaching, incredibly fast._

_He didn't know how long it was he had been unconcious, but he knew it couldn't have been too long; the blood on the inside of his helmet was still wet. He would have worried about running out of air, but he only had to feel the wind rippling through the rents in his pressure suit to know that was no problem. No, that wasn't bothering him, especially through the pain._

_What bothered him was that in one place, he __didn't_ _feel any pain. Slowly, terribly painfully, he managed to pull himself over to look down, so far down…and there was nothing there. His legs…_

_A second later, he lost consciousness._

"_L__egs…brawn…legs….be a Brawn!"_

Chase sat straight up, heart pounding furiously, and instantly fell back as a blinding headache assaulted his senses. He began to black out from the pain…but no, the pain wasn't anything near the pain he had felt during the…the crash. He wouldn't give in to the darkness again!

Over what felt like hours, the pain faded, and finally he was able to think clearly again. He had something he had needed to do…his eyes opened blearily as he remembered.

His legs. He had to know, one way or another.

Slowly, he reached down his body, dreading what he would find there; would there still be the bloody stumps, leaking away with his blood his dreams?

His eyes widened, and he lay back with relief; they were still there! Still there… He let out a long sigh of relief; _it must have been a dream, _he thought, _but it was so real! I didn't know I could imagine so much pain…_

_Speaking of dreams…_ he blinked. _Where am I?_

Also, even though he had felt his legs, he still wanted to see them, to confirm what he had felt; on the other hand, sitting up again seemed unwise, so instead he simply attempted to survey his position from lying down; from what he could see, he was in some sort of medical facility, far better than anywhere he had ever been. Of course, he had never actually been _treated _in a hospital; not even the dingy backwater hospitals that existed in his normal haunts. Something he was extremely glad for. Some of those places released their customers in worse situations than they had entered in— albeit healed of whatever minor injury they had started with— others never released their patients at all. Even at the memory, he shivered, slightly.

None of those places were anything near this one he realized as he looked around, stopping for a moment to gaze at his faint reflection in the walls.

_What the…? I can see my reflection in the _walls?

He stared for a long moment, before shaking his head and laying back; sinking into his mattress, depressed at the sudden realization that he was dead.

"Of course I'm dead," he muttered, He could never be in a hospital like this in in real life, not ever, and the sensation of the loss of his legs had been far too realistic to be a dream. He hadn't even believed places like this _existed_, other than maybe faint mental images of _one_ place being like this. White walls, white floors, white sheets…it was missing only the harps and angels, it would be complete.

Just then, a person that would have qualified for the second of those two walked in, and he instantly threw his arm across his face and began muttering to himself,

"This is not real, this is not real, this is not real, this is not real—ouch!" He was cut off as he felt a sharp pinch on his side.

"I can assure you, this is very real." Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the woman smiling down at him.

"Is this…the brain-brawn academy?"

The woman's eyebrows pinched together, and then she chuckled lightly, "You're in the Ballybran medical facility. It seems like you're a bit confused, not that I blame you." She laughed again, before her face grew more serious, "I'm the chief of medicine here, my name is Antona. I was just coming to check up on you, but since it seems you've woken, I'd like to take this opportunity to clear a few preliminaries. Normally we wouldn't jump into this so soon, but your…special circumstances change things somewhat, and we would like to get them out of the way as soon as possible. Would that be alright?"

Even though he was confused, he nodded slowly, trying not to accidentally cause the headache again, and she immediately she began with a barrage of strange questions, starting with:

"Do you have perfect pitch?"

His eyebrows pinched together, "What's that?"

She smiled, "Have you ever sung before? Could you sing a C if I asked you to?"

"I haven't ever had much chance to sing, but my…mum, I suppose you could call her, she always said I sang like a space banshee and that I should shut up." He smiled at the memory; it had been a long time ago.

She laughed wearily, "I guess we'll put that down as a 'no', then." She wrote something down on her pad, and continued to read off of it, "Do you have knowledge of horticulture?"

He looked at her quizzically for a long moment, and then answered the question, "Err…no." Hydroponics, yes, but horticulture no.

She placed another mark on her pad, "Do you know about the Heptite Guild? Crystal singing? Crystal drives?" His eyes lit up on the last one, and she marked something on her pad, and proceeded to the next question, never letting him have enough time to give more than a monosyllabic response, or ask questions of his own. This cycle continued for what seemed like hours, with her asking him questions that varied from relevant ("How long were you on the _Chance?_") to what he thought was wildly irrelevant, ("What is your favorite sport?")

Finally, she asked the last question and set her pad to the side, and looked at him for a long moment. Finally, she sighed, "You're lucky you were saved when you were, you know; much longer, and you would have died of dehydration. If it weren't for your suit, you would have died days before; it was remarkably protective, even with the holes that got torn in it. Maybe next time you should consider investing in a better suit before you get tossed out a window?"

Chase grimaced, "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks, I think. I had thought I was going to die for sure."

She shook her head, "It's not me you need to thank. One of the crystal singers happened to stop by to see if there was anything salvageable on your ship, he's the one that saved you…" she paused, and then shuffled a little, "Ah, it seems as if I've forgotten to ask for your name."

He looked over at her, and then glanced away. "My name is Chase—of the _Chance,_ but I guess I'm not of the _Chance_ anymore."

"Chase? We have four people named that on the planet, what is your surname?"

He looked up, confused, "Surname? You mean…last name? I've never really had one."

"Oh?" Antona looked surprised, "Didn't you have any friends or family on board your ship?"

He shook his head slowly. "None to know or care." Not anymore.

She slowly processed this, "Nobody? Ironic," she said with a small sad smile, "That you should live, out of all the people on the ship. She was silent for a long minute.

"I'm the only one that survived, then?"

She nodded and stood, "You're the lucky one. Remember that. We're done for today, I think."

With alarm, Chase seized her arm as she walked past, "Wait! What's going to happen to me now?"

Antona paused, her face scrunching up uncomfortably, "Well," she said, slowly, "_Procedure_ for events like this—they _have_ happened in the past, actually—is… to give all the victims an unlimited ticket to any transport hub, but—"

Chase's thoughts were suddenly going a million miles per hour; "Earth!" he said, instantly, "I want to go to Earth!"

Antona shook her head quickly, "I'm sorry, we can't let you leave. Not in the condition you're in."

Chase eyes pulled together, "Why? When can I go?"

"The Heptite Guild has successfully kept its secrets safe for over five hundred years," she said slowly, her face tinged with a touch of some sort of emotion he couldn't interpret, "I'm sorry, but you've had… exposure here that we can't afford to be found."

He processed this for a long moment, "What do you expect me to do, then? Do you expect me to stay here?"

Her face remained carefully neutral, "You don't seem to have perfect pitch, but there are a number of other suitable professions available on the planet, like piloting, biology, medical, farming, or any number of other suitable occupations."

Chase took this in slowly, "Farming? If you want me to do something like that, then you don't expect me to leave any time soon…" he said, slowly, then his voice slowly escalated with angry realization, "You expect me to _stay _here? I'm supposed to totter around on this planet for the rest of my life with dirt under my nails, watching _plants grow?_"

Antona hurriedly said, "As I said, there are a number of other suitable options available—"

"No! I would rather have died in the crash that that! Anything but that!" Abruptly his blinding headache returned, and he fell back to his mattress, thrashing on the bed as Antona rushed over to the monitor to administer a knockout hypospray, as he continued to yell, "Don't make me stay! Don't make me stay…don't make me stay…" he faded out, muttering into his pillow.

Antona was silent for a long moment, "I really, truly am sorry. It's for your own good."

Finally she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her and sagging against the wall.

"I feel like a cad."

From across the hall, a tall brunette smiled reassuringly at her, "I told you, I could have done it."

Antona grimaced, "And would have turned it into a sales pitch, knowing you. Let's be honest here; you like being a crystal singer far too much to be objective about it. In any case, as chief medical director, it was my responsibility to handle." She sighed, "And if I'd told him about the symbiote, who knows what he might have done?"

"You didn't tell him?" she asked in surprise, "Why not?"

"You didn't see his face when I said that normally he'd have a ticket to anywhere in human range, or hear him talking in his sleep. The thought of hundreds of years on one planet would likely have been intolerable for him." She shook her head, "But…there's nothing we can do about it. There's no way he could leave the planet with a symbiote in his system, it's just best for everyone to keep him here… for the foreseeable future."

"Which leads us back to feeling like a cad," she said, grinning weakly, and then wobbling slightly before she was steadied by the brunette's arm and smile.

"Let me buy you a drink," She said soothingly, "It looks like you could use one."

Antona chuckled, "On you?"

"The last I checked, that's still what 'buy you a drink' means," She said, with a sprinkling of sarcasm.

"I think I'll take you up on that offer," she said, making her way towards the door, "Ah, Killa, what would I do without you?"

"Wither up and die, I suspect," she said drily. They were both still chuckling as they left the medical wing.

In his bed, even caught up in dreams, Chase clenched his fists in anger. How could they do this to him? Offer him his dream, and then snatch it from his fingertips at the last moment? It wasn't fair! Why should he be stuck here for the rest of his life, when he'd tried so hard? It just wasn't fair! It wasn't fair…

His face turned down, he fell deeper into sleep.

The guildmaster impassively watched the monitor, where a young man silently let tears drip down his face, quickly wiping them away as the sound of his next meal arriving reached his ears.

"He's been like this for several days now," Antona said, anxiously tapping her pen in her hand, "When there's nobody in the room, he lets his guard down, but we haven't been able to get more than a few moments before he shuts himself down…he goes completely unresponsive." She shrugged, "His symptoms are vaguely similar to a sound-damaged singer, but that can't be possible, because of his initial responsiveness. I have little experience with this sort of situation."

Expectantly, she looked up at the guildmaster, but his face remained as unreadable as ever. Turning away, she sighed, "I asked Killa to have you stop by because you have the most experience with this type of case. Trag—"

"I'm well aware of my abilities," he said, not unkindly. Turning, he stared at the monitor for a long moment, "The roster of the _Doubter's Chance_ has no record of anyone named Chase. Therefore, he's almost certainly not supposed to be onboard."

"You mean a stowaway." Antona said, understanding dawning on her face.

Lanzecki nodded, "Stowaways seldom stow away without a reason, especially not on a ship as harsh as the _Chance _reputes to be. What you need to do is extract that reason, and then supply it."

Antona watched him, curious, "Why the interest in this particular subject? Why this one, and not any of the other damaged ones?"

Lanzecki made his way the door, and glanced back, "Killashandra asks me for very few things. Your attention to this case has caught her interest…"

Antona nodded, satisfied, but he continued.

"Also, this one reminds me of a young man I once knew, a long, long time ago…"

Without another word, he disappeared into the corridor, leaving a startled Antona behind.

_Shankill Moon Base: System Operations_

"Where the shards did that come from?" The sound of blaring sirens were shut off as the sound of rapidfire typing filled the room, and the watch members frantically checked their scanners.

"Unknown, Sir. It practically popped out of thin air, nearly inside the atmosphere."

"They must be suicidal, coming out of hyper that late. Who is it? What's its Ident code?"

"It's not broadcasting one, sir."

He spun around, staring down the intruder as if he could incinerate it with only his gaze, "That's a class 5 offence! Hail them immediately."

There was a tense moment of silence as the tech worked at his console, before he turned back, "They're not responding to anything I send at them, sir, not even official emergency codes."

"Shards!" he gritted his teeth, "Open hails on _all_ channels, boost the power, I want their hull shaking! We'll blast it into their skulls, even if they don't want to listen!"

In his bed, Chase clenched his fists in anger. How could they do this to him? Offer him his dream, and then snatch it from his fingertips at the last moment? It wasn't fair! Why should he be stuck here for the rest of his life. _I've tried so _Hard!

His fists clenched tighter. What right did they have to order him around, anyway? What right...he slowly frowned. There _wasn't_ any reason he had to stay here, was there? They had told him he couldn't leave, but what right _did_ they have to order him around? He'd lived on the rim for years, surviving alone in the darkness, so there was no way these... _normal people_ could keep him here!

He flexed his hands again, this time in anticipation. He was alive, he was on a world that was well traveled; he could still become a brawn, if he played his cards right! He would! _And nothing, angel or demon, will stand in my way!_

C-1001 cursed prolifically as she fell into the atmosphere, frantically trying to restart her uncooperative engines. _How could I have been so stupid_, she thought savagely, _I should have _known! _Of _course_ that crate of parts was sabotaged! _

But…because the com officer and clerk had been so kind, so understanding, she hadn't expected their betrayal until it was already too late. She cursed herself again, cycling her fuel on the off chance that it would help—but it was no good. Her crystals just wouldn't activate properly, not to mention the rest of her ship! What the shards was happening to her!? She watched desperately as the planet approached, the first sounds of air building around her.

"Sir!"

The chief com officer spun, "What, do you have news? Have the responded?"

"No sir, but I just picked up a military Ident Code. No, two. No...it's...it's too many to count! It's the central third fleet!"

The Chief gasped, "Fardles! Just what's going on here?"

"No idea, sir, they're not responding to hails!"

Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, the Chief groaned, "This is too big for us. Contact the Guildmaster, and alert the ground to evacuate to storm shelters! Move!"

In the medical facility, Chase sneakily made his way to the hallway, and found, to his surprise, that there was nobody in sight, and the hall was only punctuated by a small flashing orange light with an arrow beneath it. Odd. Shaking his head, he darted the opposite way; this was his chance, and he'd be damned before he lost it.

He sprinted down the empty hall, looking frantically for a shuttle pad.

She had found it. The source of all her problems.

C-1001, for the first time since she had made her escape, felt despair.

Inside one of her accessory terminals, glowing an innocent blue, it lay. So close, yet so far; deceptively innocent, considering it was one of the most dangerous and contraband items in the known universe. It was a Hyperchip.

And, when she finally realized the true extent to which she had been wrecked, she could do nothing but stare out at the planet and listen to the wind whistling by in shock. What could she do? What should she do? _Help…_

"Ballybran, this is the Third Central Fleet, closing on your location. There is a known and highly dangerous pirate in the area, we will be taking care of the issue. Please do not interfere. Over."

The Chief grabbed the mike from his underling angrily, "We know exactly where this 'pirate' is, and whatever you did to it, it's without power and heading directly towards our largest population center!"

"Negative, Ballybran, ship must be captured without loss of the crew. Do not interfere. Over."

The Chief growled, and then began to yell, "Can't you hear me!? By the time you get here, it'll be nothing but a crater!"

There was no response, and he cursed wildly, "Someone please tell me they have an idea!"

"Um…sir, I have one. It probably won't do anything, but it's better than nothing."

"I don't care, just do it!"

"Y-yes sir!"

She could feel her hull heating up as she fell into the planet's gravity well. Without anyone at the helm, her ship was simply spinning out of control, her continuing attempts to restore control only moving the flaps and lifting surfaces randomly.

And now even her hull was groaning at the strain? To her subdued surprise, her hull began to resonate, slowly building and then falling again, sound cascading up and down her sides, making her 'ears' itch terribly.

Wait a minute. She didn't have ears anymore. Which meant those were actually radio frequencies…? In response to the building sound, her drive crystals fired wildly, sending jets of flame into the atmosphere.

The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Her crystals were controlled by sound! She still had control of her broadcast antenna, if not her receiving one to any extent! She knew what to do!

Slowly, but with building power, she began to sing in radio waves, blasting them at full intensity into her drive chamber.

"Sir, we're getting a response! It's broadcasting on an equally resonating radio frequency!"

A chorus of cheers filled the room, but the Chief quickly waved them into silence, "Everyone sit tight, we're not out of this yet. Have the techs reconfigured the old radio antennas yet?"

"They're working on it, Sir! They haven't been working in over 200 years though, so it could take a little while."

"We don't HAVE a little while! I want more power NOW! Even if it's just one, I want it yesterday!"

"Yes Sir!"

And finally, bathed in a massive chorus of resonating radio waves, C-1001 began to slow.

Inch by inch, kph by kph, her ship slowed, the noise of the wind decreasing to only a faint whisper, and then disappearing entirely.

And finally, impossibly, she set down on Ballybran.

On Shankill, dozens of people screamed in elation, indiscriminately hugging one another and yelling uncomprehendingly at each other. The chief and the young tech sat beside one another, taking turns dragging from an ancient bottle of whiskey.

"That was genius, boy," the chief said, slurring slightly, "Tuning their drive crystals from a distance? With radio waves? Insane! But genius!"

"I...It was jusht an idea," He replied before slumping to the floor.

"Genioush," the chief muttered, "But can't hold hish wishkey. Oh well." Shaking his head, he took another drag.

* * *

There was something wrong with the ship on the pavement, Chase knew that the moment he saw it. It's landing had been insanely hot; some of the pavement beneath its main thrusters was still glowing faintly, and that didn't happen unless there had been an emergency. But this was the only interstellar class ship in the landing field! It was his only chance; he had to take it.

Sprinting across the tarmac, he reached out to touch the landing strut; still cold, good. At least the landing hadn't been completely uncontrolled. If the landing gear had been too hot to touch...well, better not to think about that. With a grunt of effort, he threw himself up into the belly of the ship, whistling when he saw the equipment, shiny and new, within.

"Rich buggers," he muttered, shaking his head. Oh well, it didn't matter, the old codes would still be there. He hoped. Carefully he crawled past the landing gear mechanisms and found the panel he'd known would be there; the emergency access hatch. It was too small to fit through in a suit, and crawling through was almost always a death sentence, but it had to be there, just in case.

And in this case, it was to Chase's advantage. Quietly he whistled the five bars of an ancient song (or from a holo, he had never been entirely clear on that part) he'd been taught all those years ago. And like magic, the hatch folded open, and with a grin Chase disappeared inside.

Once inside, his suspicions were immediately confirmed. Only emergency lighting lit the narrow conduit, barely large enough for a person to crawl through. But even the emergency lighting flickered weirdly, pulsing in strange patterns, and that should be impossible! Emergency lighting was specifically made to have as few connections to the main systems as possible, and to be almost impossibly redundant!

In fact, the patterns almost looked like...He paused, letting his eyes absorb the lightning quick flashing. 6...4...2...1...1...2...3...5...8...13..._"Damn!" _he whispered harshly. That shouldn't be possible! He'd thought they'd all been destroyed or captured by the Federation! What was a _Hyperchip_ doing in a place like this, in a ship like this?

Chase reached above and yanked himself through the ship even faster. Whoever these people were, they were lucky to have survived this far. If he was going to escape, he needed to find where that Hyperchip was, and fast, or else...

He strained his muscles, going even faster.

* * *

"Shankill Moon Base, what is the status of the pirate vessel?" the words crackled over the communicator, unnoticed by dozens of intoxicated officers. "Shankill, do you copy? Over."

A new voice rumbled over the airwaves, quiet and commanding, "This is Scoria Three. Shankill seems to be offline at the moment. An unidentified ship landed here moments ago, what is its status?"

"You are not cleared for that information. Please stand by, we will be entering orbit shortly."

The voice grew even quieter, "I am the Guild Master of the Heptite Guild. I think you'll find I have clearance far above your own. Put me on to the Admiral, I believe he'll be...happy...to hear from me."

"Ah...yes! Yes Sir! Transferring you now!"

…

"Lanzecki? Is that you, you old dog?" 

"Admiral," The guild master replied drily, "Might I ask why you've decided to bring a fifth of the Alliance Firepower out to my part of the galaxy to chase a single small ship?"

The Admiral snorted, "That's no ordinary ship, Lanzecki; that's the C-1143!" he grinned at Lanzecki's slight twitch of recognition, "We spotted her exiting the Habilist system while on routine maneuvers. I'll explain the rest later, when we're not on unencrypted channels. What's her current status? She should be disabled...but we've thought that before. We never dreamed she'd try going to hyperspace with a Hyperchip in her. Sorry about the almost mess, by the way."

"We can discuss that when you're 'explaining the rest'," Lanzecki replied, slightly coolly. "The ship is motionless, I haven't seen anything happen since I got to the control room. Before that, I don't have any idea."

"Watch her carefully, but _do not approach._ I won't lose her again."

Lanzecki pondered pointing out that he didn't take orders from even an admiral, but after a moment shrugged. No point in antagonizing an Admiral either, even one as consistently friendly as this one.

"Roger that. I'll send up an escort party to show you the way when you arrive. Scoria 3 out."

Chase growled. This was the third access passage that had equipment just sticking through it! On a ship this size, which shouldn't normally hold more than a few dozen people at most, that was absurd. A modification pushing into one could be tolerated, but this was pushing towards making some parts of the ship completely inaccessible! Not even one of the _Chance_ crew would be stupid enough to do that, a fire in the wrong part of the ship could destroy critical components without any possibility of repair or even stopping the blaze!

Grunting, he sucked his chest in and managed to squeeze through. If he hadn't been so skinny...but he'd noticed annoying changes in his body recently. His chest had started to become more muscular, regardless of his best efforts to the contrary. If this trend kept up...he didn't want t think about it. In any case, he was almost there. A hyperchip operated on a certain frequency, one almost impossible to track normally, but it was really a complicated codex-cypher intermixing several songs from old earth. With good memory you could decypher them in your mind...but almost impossible to do with a computer, as any patterns that existed were far too long to be randomly solved by a computer. Particularly deadly to AI's and...brainships. He grimaced at the thought; to think that someone would deliberately try to hurt a brainship was...almost beyond comprehension.

He didn't even realize, in his anger, that he'd stopped sharing his weight equally in the access passageway. And so it was a complete surprise when, a moment later, he fell through the floor and crashed into the dead center of a room.

Chase lay where he was for a long ten seconds before he dared to look up, listening carefully for the sound of someone running, of anyone having heard his fall. _Fardles, _he thought, glancing around the room, _they've gotta notice that hole! I need to fix it somehow. Maybe if I-_

"What are you doing on my fardling ship?" His thoughts were cut off by a sudden voice, snarling in surprise.

Chase leapt to his feet, craning his neck to look for the speaker, "I'm sorry!" he said desperately, "I just need to get off this planet right away, and...Where are you?" he peered around, but the room seemed as empty as it had before, "Who are you?" he demanded nervously.

"Right here, you Idiot!" the voice replied, flashing her main monitor several times.

Chase stared at the column for a long moment. Suddenly realization struck, and his eyes went as wide as saucers.

"Oh. _Oh!_ You're the ship! You're the _ship!_" If his eyes could have grown any larger, they would have. "Shellcrack! I can't believe it! I'm actually on board a real Brainship! A real brainship!" He ran his hands reverently over the walls, mouth hanging slack, looking wildly around trying to take in everything at once.

"It's not like the ship's any different from any other, you know," She said drily.

"But...it's a...you're a... _Brainship! _Strength, freedom, prestige... The whole universe is yours, you're accepted everywhere, free to travel wherever you please, just you and your brawn..."Chase faded off, eyes far away. Suddenly he had a thought, and started to glance around around quizzically, "Where's your brawn? I haven't seen him anywhere."

"Brawn?" The ship growled, "I don't have a brawn. I don't need one."

Even to Chase, the words seemed slightly forced, and he looked at her quizzically, "But every brainship needs a brawn. What if you need to interact with people outside your ship? Or what if your need to be repaired somewhere your servos cant reach? Or-"

"_I do not need a brawn. _Is that clear?" The words were tight, strained.

Chase slowly nodded. "But...aren't you lonely? I know I would be. Even on the _Chance_ I always had someone nearby," his smile slid into a frown, "Even if they didn't know I was there. If I had to go for months at a time without seeing anyone..." he pondered it for a moment, oblivious to the silence that was conspicuously being broadcast throughout the cabin, "I think I'd probably go crazy!"

"What. Did You. Say."

Chase shrunk in pain; the words sounded like they'd gone through a woodchipper, "I just said I think I'd go cra-"

"I AM NOT CRAZY!"

"I-"

"I HAVE NOT GONE CRAZY! NOT YET! AND I WON'T LET YOU _LIE_ TO ME! GO. AWAY!"

Chase froze in fear; his ears had just popped. "What are you doing!?" he said in disbelief. She was pumping the air out of the cabin!

"I'm making you be quiet! I don't have to deal with you! I won't! I refuse!"

Chase didn't have time to think; he began taking deep breaths, preparing to jump back into the vent above; maybe if he could get close to the air supply, he could...he could...the world began to swim around him. The air was dropping faster than he realized. "How...can you...do this...?" He gasped, falling to his knees, "You're...a...brainship!"

"And I don't even know your name. Or care. You'll be quiet soon enough. Soon enough..." Her voice was almost a whisper.

"My name...?" he gasped, drawing in breath after thinning breath, "My name...is Chase Chance!"

At last the black overcame him, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.


	3. Fallen

**Breakdown**

When a person wakes up after vacuum exposure, there are usually a few well known symptoms, including, but not limited to: splitting headaches, oral and cochlear bleeding, and profuse vomiting. Any of those might have been expected in Chase's circumstances.

Unfortunately for the laws of physics, Chase didn't have time to care about the circumstances. He knew precisely what would happen to you if you stayed in vacuum for too long. Of course, what was portrayed in the tri-D horrors wasn't exactly true; you wouldn't explode, the way they showed in the movies. Instead your blood vessels would begin to expand as your blood boiled into space, eventually destroying your tissue and leaving you as nothing but a pink nebula of bloody mist spiraling through space. The thought of such a fate was plenty to keep even the most experienced spacer up at night, listening for the tell-tale popping sensation that indicated a pressure leak.

In other words, the instant he regained consciousness he was already moving, pressing against the wall moments later, his eyes darting from side to side and his body dragging in frantic gasps of life-giving air. Even as his conscious thoughts milled in confusion, the primal part of his brain looked frantically for a place to hide, identifying each and every nook and cranny in the room with utmost precision.

Slowly, however, his memory returned; with it came a slow relaxation of the pace of his breath; it faded slowly over a long minute until at last the only thing he could hear was the soft sighing of the ventilation system.

"Brainship?"

His voice echoed slightly, ringing off into the darkness of the ship, returning to him accompanied by only silence. Cautiously, he stepped away from the wall. For a moment, nothing happened.

A moment later, nothing continued to happen. Chase glanced around in confusion; the entire room—no, the entire ship seemed to have gone dark and quiet.

"Hello?" he called, trying again, "Are you there, Brainship?"

Something flickered in the corner of his eye; he spun to face it, hands up to defend himself…but all that was there was a faintly flickering monitor, glowing in the darkness. Cautiously he approached it, and looked down at what it displayed;

Two young girls smiled up at him from the screen, wearing identical dresses, and each with an arm around the other. Other than that, they were as different as could be; one had long light hair, the other dark and cut short and somewhat raggedly. One was smiling sunnily, while the other had an expression that looked slightly forced, as if she would rather be doing something else, but was humoring her friend. Chase thought their expressions were remarkably mature for their ages; they couldn't be more than five years old. In the background, a small group of people stood, waiting; the picture was too dim for his eyes to see clearly; he leaned closer, until his nose pressed up against the plastic.

Instantly the picture disappeared, and he jumped back as a bright red banner blared onto every screen in the room, accompanied by a metallic sounding voice; "**Restricted Area: Authorization Required!**"

A moment later the banner disappeared, replaced on every monitor by a single dark blue eye, immediately focused on him. "**Please State your Name and Purpose.**" It demanded.

Chase stared up at the now bright screen with wide eyes, and without thinking, stuttered, "C-Chase! Chase Chance!"

The eye began to whirl, its gaze darting across the room before finally folding in on itself, "Password Accepted. Administrator Status Recognized. What may I do for you, Administrator?"

"W-What? Y-you're joking, right?" his eyebrows pulled together, "Why would my name be-Oh. Oh!" He glared up at the screen, "I'm talking to the brainship, right? This is just some big joke, isn't it? What is this, a _game_ to you? I could have _died_ back there!"

"Invalid, Administrator. Brainship currently suffering symptoms of remission, this-personality is security semi-personality SAL 4. I request your assistance, administrator."

Chase stared at the screen, nonplussed, for a moment, before rolling his eyes, "Fine, I'll play along. I guess I'm stuck here anyway...hmm." he paused for a moment, "What should i say...how about this; What is the status of the Brainship?"

The reply came back immediately, "Hull Integrity: Nominal. Armory Status: Nominal. Weaponry Suite: Nominal. Atmospheric Status: Nom-"

Chase cut it off, "Weaponry Suite? What kind of ship is this? Cancel request, computer! What is the status of the _brain_, not the _ship._"

The computer paused for a moment, then, oddly, replied with a question; "Program JAIVAS is requesting access, y/n?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Program _JAIVAS_ is requesting access, please confirm y/n?"

Chase rubbed his forehead wearily, muttering to himself, "I'm space sick, crash-sick, tired, in pain, and computers are asking me for advice and i _still_ dont know what I'm doing!" He groaned, and then cracked one eye open, "First tell me the status of the brain, where is she?"

The computer went silent for another moment, then replied, "Access granted to JAIVAS. Function terminated, entering sleep mode..."

"No, wait!" The eye blinked out completely, and Chase punched the monitor, "Blast it, don't shut down...shards!" He kicked the terminal in frustration, "Stupid modern junk. At least the old stuff does what you tell the sharding thing to fardling do!"

"**I feel as if i should be insulted.**" Suddenly, his ears were submerged in a deep male voice, rich with humor.

Chase froze mid-kick, then turned around warily, "Who are you?"

"**JAIVAS** now online," the voice replied with a deep british accent, "Also, you shouldn't be so hard on poor SAL, she was doing quite well for a semi-AI construct. Goodness knows she has enough stress put on her by our _beloved_ owner." the words echoed ironically.

"Your...owner?"

"Indeed. Perhaps i should introduce myself more fully; I am Jaivas 9000, personal advanced personality AI of the C-1001, and I am here for the same reason you are."

Chase looked quizzically back at the terminal, and asked, "What's that?"

"Why...to rescue Chalia, of course."

"Chalia!"

...

"Chaaaaalia...Chalia!"

...

"Chalia! Wake up!"

...

The darkness around her seemed to lighten with each repetition of the name. Who was it calling her? For a moment, she almost thought it was a male voice calling it, but then she was overwhelmed by a voice she hadn't heard in ove three years.

"Chalia! Wake up, sleepyhead!"

Blearily, Chalia awoke from DeepSleep, to find a huge grin covering her entire optic channel.

"Eep!" She yelped, all her servos spasming in alarm. "Don't _Do _that!" she said, annoyed, as she rapidly adjusted her nutrient mix to calm her heartbeat, "You know I hate it when you do that!"

The other girl leaned away from her solitary camera and chuckled in a rather unladylike manner, "Okay, i guess you can just go back to sleep and let me go off without..." She faked wiping tears from her eyes dramatically, "Without even saying goodbye!" She buried her face in her hands and let out a very unrealistic sob.

"Alright, alright, i'm sorr-" Chalia froze, and then, her heartbeat accelerating despite her nutrients, yelled, "They let you _go!_?"

Her sisters face cracked into a wide grin and she backed up, spinning in her custom C.S. uniform, "Yep! Accepted and everything! I already have my room assignment and everything and...everything!" She bounced on the balls of her feet in excitement, "I can hardly wait!"

"But...what about...Father?" Chalia replied, nervously, "You know that he has the final say on whether you go or not..."

Her sister chuckled evilly, "Not a problem. A few phone calls, a bit of clothing borrowed from a guy I met at a bar down in the local town, and five minutes of work, and_ voila._"

She tossed a disk case onto the table in front of Chalia's camera, and Chalia inspected it curiously, letting out a buzz of surprise at what she saw.

"I only wish you could've seen his face when he realized I was ready to release a death-synthocom record with my _real name!_ Priceless," she cackled, "By the time i was done explaining exactly how the first act went, he was practically begging me to join the Brawn Academy!" She winked, "Under an assumed name, of course." She grunted, "I don't doubt that he'll be back, asking me to take up my real name again once news of what we can do gets out. Not that I'll give that old man anything..." she snorted harshly.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

When Chalia finally spoke, the words sounded like they were coming through a tunnel; "So...you're going."

"Aww, don't be like that!" Her sister knelt down and put her hand up against her column, the same way they had talked as children, "I worked that out, too. You'll be off to the shipyard as soon as you're old enough to be a real brainship, and then I'll come and find you. We'll be together after that."

Chalia turned her camera up, hopefully, "Really?"

"Definitely. We'll show the galaxy how it's really done!" Her face turned thoughtful for a moment, then she grinned, "Remember that corny old phrase we used to use as a password?"

Chalia grinned, "The Chance Sisters! We'll chase chance to the End of the Universe!"

Her sister chuckled, then stopped for a long moment to just look at her. Suddenly, she wiped a bit of moisture from her eyes, "I'll miss you, sis. I'll write you."

"How will i know when you're coming to find me?"

Her sister smiled seriously, "The next time you hear our password, you'll know its time for your..._our_ names to shine, all across the galaxy. Okay?"

She smiled up at the column for a long moment, before glancing at her wrist unit and standing with apologetic look on her face, "The shuttle is leaving in 10 minutes, and it wont wait for me anymore. I've got to go." Slinging her carisak over her shoulder, she walked to the door and glanced back for a last time, "Bye, Chal."

She barely heard her sister whisper back, "Goodbye...Chria."

Chase inspected the Hyperchip with a slow reverence. Once they had been the most advanced piece of technology in the worlds, offering a tenfold increase in capability wherever they were installed. That was before they'd been revealed as a trap, of course. In the 10 years since that time, nobody had been able to unravel the secrets of their inner workings. Open them incorrectly and they self destructed. Send anything resembling a scan through and it would reflect it back out...with ten times the power. It was a mystery.

Except to one man.

Unfortunately, Chase wasn't that man.

Fortunately, he had been taught by that man.

Sighing, he reached down and touched the chip in six very specific points, in a very specific pattern, and without a fuss, the chip snapped open, revealing its inner workings. Chase smiled wistfully; he'd seen Artur do this dozens of times...not on a real Hyperchip, of course. They were impossible to find these days. But he still knew what to do.

With a small grunt of effort, he pushed hard on a specific piece of the inner workings, and with a snap, it appeared to break...and almost immediately, the 'broken' circuit-board melted back into the covering, disappearing completely. Three more touches of the inside, where no apparent buttons existed, and the faint hypersonic whining noise faded, growing quieter but rising into a higher pitch. Cocking his head to the side, he frowned.

"**What seems to be the problem?" **the voice of the AI said. It had guided him to the effected area after Chase described the general area, and had watched patiently as Chase had methodologically opened the compartment.

"It's just..." Chase started, then shook his head, "I must have done something wrong. I can hear the song still. It should be inaudible to human hearing."

"**Song?"** The AI replied.

Chase nodded, "Hyperchips are encoded on...well, dozens of layers. Whoever designed them must have been a fardling genius at coding and cracking, and it shows in how it was designed; every part of it is made to be difficult to understand unless you _understand_ every part of it. I only know what I know because my..." He paused. What had Artur been? Finally he shrugged, "My...f_riend_ taught me. Even he didn't know everything, and he claimed to be the person who knew the most about the damn things other than their creator himself."

"**That doesn't have much to do with a song." **The AI replied drily.

"Yeah it does. The Hyperchips were built on a base of several songs of different lengths intermixing at the same time. Unless you have all _six_ cyphers, you can never interpret the structure, because the length difference leads to an almost infinite number of possible solutions. But if you can pick out each song and hold them in your head simultaneously..."

"**You can unravel the code. Very interesting."**

Chase grinned; people normally weren't all that interested in this sort of thing. He wasn't either, honestly. "With what I did, it should be fine, but I can still hear the songs! They're just...higher pitched. I'm not sure that I could even whistle that high."

"**According to the public database, humans of your type can only hear up to 20000 hertz."**

Chase raised an eyebrow, "So?"

"**According to my sensor data, the sound is playing at 148000 hertz. It should be physically impossible for you to be hearing anything."**

Chase's jaw dropped at the figure, "That's...that's impossible!"

"**Indeed. However, this suggests that the problem lies not in the Hyperchip, but in you."**

"But how...maybe during the crash, somehow? But that's impossible." Chase's brow furrowed.

"**As much as I enjoy this delightful conversation, I feel like you should know that Chalia is the only one who can fly this ship with its modifications, and unless we leave in the next nine minutes the majority of the Third Fleet will be arriving at our position."**

Chase's eyes bugged out. The Third Fleet? What had he gotten himself into? But he still didn't have a choice. If he wanted to leave, he had to leave _now. _His choice had already been made; he slammed the Hyperchip closed.

At that moment, many things happened.

The lights, dimmed and flickering, abruptly sprung back to full intensity.

The pulsing cross-music finally faded from what Chase could hear.

And more importantly, the air started pumping out again.

Chase started to take deep breaths even faster this time, "Why!?" He managed, "I helped you!"

"What. Are. You. Doing. On. My. Ship."

"Trying to help you!" Chase said shortly, trying to conserve the oxygen in his lungs. Maybe if he made it back to the hole in the ceiling...but it would take too long to get to the access hatch! He had to convince her, now!

Throwing caution to the wind, he used up his entire air supply in one sentence; "I fixed the Hyperchip! You can take off again, You don't have to keep me on board, just get me away from this place!"

He finally ran out of air and began taking rapid breaths of the quickly thinning atmosphere.

"Why should I help you?" The ship demanded.

"They...won't...let...me...leave!" he said between gasps, "You're...my...only...chance!"

"**Chalia, you will not be able to 'dump' him here and avoid the Third Fleet at the same time. And if you don't mind my saying, he **_**did**_** save your life, or at least your freedom."**

"Fine. But I'm dumping you off at the first station, you hear me! No further!"

Chase didn't hear her. He had fallen unconscious for a second time.

The Third Fleet was to be the pride of the Federation Navy. Staffed with the best and the brightest of an upcoming generation, it would one day be the cornerstone of Next Wave, the effort, finally pushed through the Federation Council, to make second contact with the hundreds of human colonies that lay beyond the borders of civilized space, and to finally bring the the dreams born five hundred years before, of a unified alliance of peoples crossing the entire sector, to fruition.

For now, however, that was just a dream. The 'finely trained crewmen' were still cadets fresh out of the academy, and the half the ships were slated to be replaced or scrapped within the next ten years.

Despite those crippling factors, there was one area in which the Third excelled; enthusiasm. So it was only seconds after it happened that the report came to the admiral. His response, likewise, came only a few seconds after that.

"_WHAT!?"_

With a face as dark as thunder, the Admiral stormed to the bridge. "Status!" He demanded, the acting captain barely having time to clear the command chair before the Admiral sat there, "What's happening down there?"

"C-1001 just stopped broadcasting her tracking signal. She's-!"

Their commentary was cut off as the brainship blasted past just outside the viewscreen, trailing on a trail of sun-hot plasma, and blowing a loud raspberry on every communications channel available before blinking into hyperspace.

"Um...she's gone, Sir."

The bridge was silent for a long, awkward moment. The Admiral's fingers slowly tightened on the armrests of his chair until they began to creak from the strain...and then he squeezed even harder, until a plume of sparks finally burst from its side, making everyone on the bridge jump.

"Ensign!" he barked, staring at his fingers as if willing them to relax. Finally they did, and he flexed his fist a bit _too_ aggressively. "Order a shuttle to ready in docking bay two." Standing, he strode to the turbolift, pausing at the threshold, "And get someone up here to fix that fardling command chair!"

When Chase awoke the second time, he really would have liked to spring to his feet like he had the first time. Unfortunately, whatever strength he seemed to have had, had faded long before. Groaning, he struggled to sit up; it felt like every muscle in his body had been crushed into the floor.

"**Not a bad analogy, honestly. Chalia was peaking at nearly 40 G's. She is not terribly comfortable with...biological companions."**

The ship cut in, "Enough excuses, Jay. Shouldn't you be shut down by now, anyway?"

"**It is my role to ensure your protection. With a potential threat onboard, I could hardly leave you alone."**

"Yeah, great. Chase, right? I suppose I should thank you, but I don't feel like it. So how'd you do it, eh? Solving one of the greatest engineering problems of the century in the space of a few minutes? And don't tell me you just figured it out, nobody's that smart. And if they were, I'd be just as smart, and I'd have figured it out too. So spill; what's your secret!"

Chase stared around the empty cabin in befuddlement, finally lowering his head into his hands and rubbing his aching eyes. They'd probably ruptured in the low pressure; he'd be in pain for weeks. Sighing, he responded, "I can't tell you how-"

"Fardles to that. You fixed that bloody thing, and I can still _feel_ it in my ship, and if it ever acts up again I want to know how to fix it! So tell me! Or do I have to vent the ship again?"

Chase stopped at that one; she was a brainship, wasn't she? How could she be threatening him so easily? Not even the Cen-Sec brainships were this bad...were they? They couldn't be.

"It's not that I wouldn't, it's that I _can't-"_

The ship was suddenly much colder, "You _will_ tell me. _Now."_

"Fine!" Chase exclaimed, "You have to position your body so the hypersonic noise resonates through your ocular cavity! Are you happy now?" he finally managed to get to his feet, leveling a finger at the blank walls, "I was trying to tell you; you _can't_ fix a Hyperchip yourself, because the decoding sequence is based on very specific perameters of the human body! The entire bloody thing is a whole mess of interlocking codes; whoever designed the fardling thing was either a genius or a lunatic, which is probably why it works so fardling well! It's _Impossible_ to fix as a Brain, it was designed that way!"

"You're Lying!" The ship snarled.

"Why would I possibly want to lie about this?" Chase demanded, "If the chip goes haywire again and you won't let me fix it, I'll be just as cooked as you! What if it decides to kick in just as you're making a course correction across a sun? A brain can survive a lot in that column, but I doubt even you could take a star to the face and survive it."

The Ship huffed, "I'd find a way."

"Yeah, I'm sure." Chase said, "Y'know, I'm starting to doubt you're a brain at all. No Brawn, a creepy as shards AI, and _why are you being chased by the Federation?_ Not to mention...you tried to kill me! I mean, I'm sure you've got a good reason and all, but..." he shook his head, "You're really testing my faith here, you know? How am I supposed to believe that Brainships are always good when you're being such a...such a..." he could finish, throwing his hands into the air. "You're supposed to be perfect! There are people who would trade their lives to see a brainship ride in on a trail of silver fire and save the day, out here on the rim!"

"You seem to have a slightly idealistic impression of brainships," The ship replied drily, "We're not like that. Not at all. We're just as flawed as anyone else. Sometimes...moreso."

"See, that's what I don't get!" Chase said angrily, running a hand through his hair, "Wasn't Helva a brainship?"

"Yes..."

"And she saved thousands of peoples lives, even after she left the Federation! And then there's Centerpoint Station, Basilisk Station, the 18th Colonization fleet, the Citadel Collapse, the Flight of the Ardisk, countless plagues and natural disasters on hundreds of planets, and every time a Brainship has been there, helping to save the day. Don't tell me all _that _isn't true, either!"

"You're an idiot. Those were just people doing their jobs. So they saved a bunch of people's lives. What's the point? They all would have died sooner or later, anyway."

Chase drew back, eyes wide, "You really aren't like them, are you? How...how? Is it...because you're alone?"

"Oh Hell no. I am _not crazy, understand? _I've told myself that enough, _I KNOW._"

"But...how could you betray our trust like this? How?"

"How could I?" The ship replied, low and dangerous, "How Could I? How _dare_ you accuse me of _anything_! I don't give a bloody damn what other brainships do;_I am not one of them._ They could go rot in hell, and save me and the galaxy a lot of trouble! The universe would be a better place without them running around, playing at being _heroes! _Them and their bloody, arrogant, traitorous _brawns."_ She paused as if for air, then in dawning realization continued, "That's what you want to be, isn't it? You want to be a brawn! You want to go to Sol, with their pretty people and their pretty _Brawn Academy_! Well, I hope you get there! I bey they'll teach _you_ to Betray the people you love, too!"

With each word, her voice grew louder, until it was blasting through the cabin at maximum volume. Still it grew louder, piercing tones now sharing the words. Chase began to sink to his knees, clutching his head in pain as the Ship continued furiously,

"Brawns! You seem to think that _brawns_ are some sort of perfect creature, you're treating them like they're...like they're gods! But what are they, actually? When they're not actively treating you like the scum of the earth for the _offense_ of having your own opinion, they will lie to you, cheat you, and stab you in the back, just for a _biological function!_" She finished with a scream, a high pitched whine that emitted continuously, and for some reason she couldn't make it stop; Chase began to squeeze his head from the pain as it grew louder and louder. Even angrier, Chalia continued, "But go on! Become a _brawn._ Go and die! But do it quickly, before you hurt someone else!"

With a final blast of screeching static, the lights went off as one, and for the third time that day, Chase collapsed into unconsciousness.


End file.
